Around the castle, they say your armor protects you. The soldiers fawn over the way it makes your body imposing and your stance unassailable. The Ladies turn from their husbands and wives as your heavy footfalls approach, each one hoping they might get a peek under your mask to understand the mystery within.
None of them understand the truth. Your armor doesn't protect you, it protects them. The twisting visage beneath your cold steel skin would tear their minds asunder. They would fall much more quickly than you had. When your Queen had begun to whisper truths to you through your helm. Words only she knew and only you could hear. As soon as you began to take them in, you knew she was reshaping you. You knew that your purpose was no longer your own. You melted and twisted at her whim, and the longer it went on, the more you believed she was right for doing so. The more you questioned why it was only you who was receiving her gifts.
But as you looked at her court, all envious and curious as to your form beneath the steel, you knew why she spared them. Their innocence only fueled you. Twisted you further. Isolated you as your mind and body boiled within an iron cage.
Sooner or later you would leak out. This armor would not contain you forever, and the Queen knew this. She teased you with the thoughts of what would happen. What would happen to those who saw you? What would happen to you?
Eventually you felt their envy and curiosity too. Why couldn't you exist free of your metal skin? Why couldn't you look at your own face?
And finally, ten years from the day you first donned the armor, the Queen commanded you, in full view of her court, to reveal yourself. Without hesitation, you allowed the armor to melt away. Subsumed into your form, with bits of leftover steel clattering to the ground. And at once the court laid eyes on you and could not look away. Their faces faded and bodies writhed as hunger filled their beings. Minds shattered and devotion declared. Your Queen watched with satisfaction as they all fell just like you. And when you gazed down into your cup and saw your own reflection for the first time in ten years, you decayed away with them.
~~~
Apparently I wrote this a year ago and it was just sitting in my drafts? Anywhere, here you go!